Each line should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n). Lines should not be larger than 70 characters.
(Windows only) When PHP is talking to a SMTP server directly, if a full stop is found on the start of a line, it is removed. To counter-act this, replace these occurrences with a double dot.
String or array to be inserted at the end of the email header.
This is typically used to add extra headers (From, Cc, and Bcc). Multiple extra headers should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n). If outside data are used to compose this header, the data should be sanitized so that no unwanted headers could be injected.
If an array is passed, its keys are the header names and its values are the respective header values.
Note:
Before PHP 5.4.42 and 5.5.27, repectively, additional_headers did not have mail header injection protection. Therefore, users must make sure specified headers are safe and contains headers only. i.e. Never start mail body by putting multiple newlines.
Note:
When sending mail, the mail must contain a From header. This can be set with the additional_headers parameter, or a default can be set in php.ini .
Failing to do this will result in an error message similar to Warning: mail(): «sendmail_from» not set in php.ini or custom «From:» header missing . The From header sets also Return-Path when sending directly via SMTP (Windows only).
Note:
If messages are not received, try using a LF (\n) only. Some Unix mail transfer agents (most notably » qmail) replace LF by CRLF automatically (which leads to doubling CR if CRLF is used). This should be a last resort, as it does not comply with » RFC 2822.
The additional_params parameter can be used to pass additional flags as command line options to the program configured to be used when sending mail, as defined by the sendmail_path configuration setting. For example, this can be used to set the envelope sender address when using sendmail with the -f sendmail option.
This parameter is escaped by escapeshellcmd() internally to prevent command execution. escapeshellcmd() prevents command execution, but allows to add additional parameters. For security reasons, it is recommended for the user to sanitize this parameter to avoid adding unwanted parameters to the shell command.
Since escapeshellcmd() is applied automatically, some characters that are allowed as email addresses by internet RFCs cannot be used. mail() can not allow such characters, so in programs where the use of such characters is required, alternative means of sending emails (such as using a framework or a library) is recommended.
The user that the webserver runs as should be added as a trusted user to the sendmail configuration to prevent a ‘X-Warning’ header from being added to the message when the envelope sender (-f) is set using this method. For sendmail users, this file is /etc/mail/trusted-users .
Return Values
Returns true if the mail was successfully accepted for delivery, false otherwise.
It is important to note that just because the mail was accepted for delivery, it does NOT mean the mail will actually reach the intended destination.
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 7.2.0 | The additional_headers parameter now also accepts an array . |
Examples
Example #1 Sending mail.
Using mail() to send a simple email:
// The message
$message = «Line 1\r\nLine 2\r\nLine 3» ;
// In case any of our lines are larger than 70 characters, we should use wordwrap()
$message = wordwrap ( $message , 70 , «\r\n» );
// Send
mail ( ‘caffeinated@example.com’ , ‘My Subject’ , $message );
?>
Example #2 Sending mail with extra headers.
The addition of basic headers, telling the MUA the From and Reply-To addresses:
$to = ‘nobody@example.com’ ;
$subject = ‘the subject’ ;
$message = ‘hello’ ;
$headers = ‘From: webmaster@example.com’ . «\r\n» .
‘Reply-To: webmaster@example.com’ . «\r\n» .
‘X-Mailer: PHP/’ . phpversion ();
mail ( $to , $subject , $message , $headers );
?>
Example #3 Sending mail with extra headers as array
This example sends the same mail as the example immediately above, but passes the additional headers as array (available as of PHP 7.2.0).
$to = ‘nobody@example.com’ ;
$subject = ‘the subject’ ;
$message = ‘hello’ ;
$headers = array(
‘From’ => ‘webmaster@example.com’ ,
‘Reply-To’ => ‘webmaster@example.com’ ,
‘X-Mailer’ => ‘PHP/’ . phpversion ()
);
mail ( $to , $subject , $message , $headers );
?>
Example #4 Sending mail with an additional command line parameter.
The additional_params parameter can be used to pass an additional parameter to the program configured to use when sending mail using the sendmail_path .
Example #5 Sending HTML email
It is also possible to send HTML email with mail() .
// Multiple recipients
$to = ‘johny@example.com, sally@example.com’ ; // note the comma
// Subject
$subject = ‘Birthday Reminders for August’ ;
// Message
$message = ‘
Here are the birthdays upcoming in August!
| Person | Day | Month | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johny | 10th | August | 1970 |
| Sally | 17th | August | 1973 |
‘ ;
// To send HTML mail, the Content-type header must be set
$headers [] = ‘MIME-Version: 1.0’ ;
$headers [] = ‘Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1’ ;
// Additional headers
$headers [] = ‘To: Mary , Kelly ‘ ;
$headers [] = ‘From: Birthday Reminder ‘ ;
$headers [] = ‘Cc: birthdayarchive@example.com’ ;
$headers [] = ‘Bcc: birthdaycheck@example.com’ ;
// Mail it
mail ( $to , $subject , $message , implode ( «\r\n» , $headers ));
?>
Note:
If intending to send HTML or otherwise Complex mails, it is recommended to use the PEAR package » PEAR::Mail_Mime.
Notes
Note:
The SMTP implementation (Windows only) of mail() differs in many ways from the sendmail implementation. First, it doesn’t use a local binary for composing messages but only operates on direct sockets which means a MTA is needed listening on a network socket (which can either on the localhost or a remote machine).
Second, the custom headers like From: , Cc: , Bcc: and Date: are not interpreted by the MTA in the first place, but are parsed by PHP.
As such, the to parameter should not be an address in the form of «Something «. The mail command may not parse this properly while talking with the MTA.
Note:
It is worth noting that the mail() function is not suitable for larger volumes of email in a loop. This function opens and closes an SMTP socket for each email, which is not very efficient.
For the sending of large amounts of email, see the » PEAR::Mail, and » PEAR::Mail_Queue packages.
See Also
PHP — Sending Emails using PHP
PHP must be configured correctly in the php.ini file with the details of how your system sends email. Open php.ini file available in /etc/ directory and find the section headed [mail function].
Windows users should ensure that two directives are supplied. The first is called SMTP that defines your email server address. The second is called sendmail_from which defines your own email address.
The configuration for Windows should look something like this −
[mail function] ; For Win32 only. SMTP = smtp.secureserver.net ; For win32 only sendmail_from = webmaster@tutorialspoint.com
Linux users simply need to let PHP know the location of their sendmail application. The path and any desired switches should be specified to the sendmail_path directive.
The configuration for Linux should look something like this −
[mail function] ; For Win32 only. SMTP = ; For win32 only sendmail_from = ; For Unix only sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i
Sending plain text email
PHP makes use of mail() function to send an email. This function requires three mandatory arguments that specify the recipient’s email address, the subject of the the message and the actual message additionally there are other two optional parameters.
mail( to, subject, message, headers, parameters );
Here is the description for each parameters.
Required. Specifies the receiver / receivers of the email
Required. Specifies the subject of the email. This parameter cannot contain any newline characters
Required. Defines the message to be sent. Each line should be separated with a LF (\n). Lines should not exceed 70 characters
Optional. Specifies additional headers, like From, Cc, and Bcc. The additional headers should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n)
Optional. Specifies an additional parameter to the send mail program
As soon as the mail function is called PHP will attempt to send the email then it will return true if successful or false if it is failed.
Multiple recipients can be specified as the first argument to the mail() function in a comma separated list.
Sending HTML email
When you send a text message using PHP then all the content will be treated as simple text. Even if you will include HTML tags in a text message, it will be displayed as simple text and HTML tags will not be formatted according to HTML syntax. But PHP provides option to send an HTML message as actual HTML message.
While sending an email message you can specify a Mime version, content type and character set to send an HTML email.
Example
Following example will send an HTML email message to xyz@somedomain.com copying it to afgh@somedomain.com. You can code this program in such a way that it should receive all content from the user and then it should send an email.
This is HTML message."; $message .= "This is headline.
"; $header = "From:abc@somedomain.com \r\n"; $header .= "Cc:afgh@somedomain.com \r\n"; $header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n"; $header .= "Content-type: text/html\r\n"; $retval = mail ($to,$subject,$message,$header); if( $retval == true ) < echo "Message sent successfully. "; >else < echo "Message could not be sent. "; >?>
Sending attachments with email
To send an email with mixed content requires to set Content-type header to multipart/mixed. Then text and attachment sections can be specified within boundaries.
A boundary is started with two hyphens followed by a unique number which can not appear in the message part of the email. A PHP function md5() is used to create a 32 digit hexadecimal number to create unique number. A final boundary denoting the email’s final section must also end with two hyphens.
x"; $headers .= "\nMIME-Version: 1.0\n" . "Content-Type: multipart/mixed;\n" . " boundary=\"\""; $email_txt .= $msg_txt; $email_message .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\n\n" . "--\n" . "Content-Type:text/html; charset = \"iso-8859-1\"\n" . "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\n" . $email_txt . "\n\n"; $data = chunk_split(base64_encode($data)); $email_message .= "--\n" . "Content-Type: ;\n" . " name = \"\"\n" . //"Content-Disposition: attachment;\n" . //" filename = \"\"\n" . "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n\n" . $data . "\n\n" . "----\n"; $ok = mail($email_to, $email_subject, $email_message, $headers); if($ok) < echo "File Sent Successfully."; unlink($attachment); // delete a file after attachment sent. >else < die("Sorry but the email could not be sent. Please go back and try again!"); >> move_uploaded_file($_FILES["filea"]["tmp_name"], 'temp/'.basename($_FILES['filea']['name'])); mail_attachment("$from", "youremailaddress@gmail.com", "subject", "message", ("temp/".$_FILES["filea"]["name"])); > ?>
|